After Baxter Robertson fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming a professional musician, he found himself in a profound quandary. He had survived performing on streets and in dingy clubs, built a major label recording artist career, and now managed to support a family in a competitive creative career as a highly regarded commercial composer, writing music for toys, TV, movies, and apps, but something was missing.

“I was sitting there at my computer and it hit me: I had done all this work to be a professional musician, but I wasn’t playing live,” the San Francisco-based artist/composer/multi-instrumentalist says. “I realized, to be who I truly am, I had to be in front of people playing music.”

From this inner directive Robertson created The Tiger Club, a fluid collective of musicians playing his wildly imaginative compositions, an eclectically evocative brand of instrumental pop conjuring exotic locales, intrigue, wry wit, elegant cool, mystique, silken soul, and lush sensuality, among other tastefully stylized but playful moods. The project’s latest, Mephisto Island (Aeneid Recording Company), represents a remarkable feat. It showcases a distinct band identity threaded through a vibrant tapestry of complimentary and contrasting styles.

Robertson holds a degree in music composition from UCLA. He developed his fearlessly theatrical creativity performing in a popular LA street band from 1973 to 1976. From that fertile time, he went on to record as pop-rock artist for such labels as RCA, Atlantic, and ATCO. Currently Robertson is an in-demand commercial composer for television, major motion pictures, apps, and toys. In addition to this work, he teaches graduate level studies in harmony and music theory at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

The Tiger Club was born in 2004 from the need to play adventurous but accessible music that harnessed Robertson’s compositional skills, his sense of whimsy, and his desire to connect with people through live performance. Mephisto Island (Aeneid Recording Company) is the group’s second record and it’s finest. It benefits from a stable collective of musicians—club members, as they are called—and a well-developed sense of band identity.

The 10 instrumental originals on Mephisto Island (Aeneid Recording Company) are refreshingly diverse, spanning the quiet fire of the Latin-tinged “Showdown at Mezcal Flats,” the slinky strut of “Green Goddess,” and the jubilant gospel-flavored “Order Of The Seeing Eye.” In today’s computer-based culture, it’s a revelation to hear a punchy horn section, stately strings, and clever arrangements played in real time by a cast of twenty-five world-class musicians from all over the United States.

Mephisto Island was produced and mixed by Cal Ball for his indie imprint Aeneid Recording Company. Ball crafted a production aesthetic that is warm and vibey with a pristine, modern pop clarity. The album was recorded by engineer Willie Samuels at Studio Trilogy and mastered by grammy award-winning mastering engineer Bernie Grundman.

The Tiger Club’s live show is whole other animal. It’s a freewheeling romp with Clubbers dressed uniform, burning through originals and ingenious vocal versions of chestnuts such as “Mellow Yellow,” “Daydream Believer,” and Blue Öyster Cult’s “Burnin’ For You” which they’ve been known to perform as a scorching ska number.

Of all the highlights of Robertson’s storied professional musician career, it’s a simple feeling he cherishes the most. “It’s that moment you realize you’re onstage killing it, the audience is digging it, and you’re communicating who you really are. Nothing stokes the fire of life and creativity like that.”

Opening with ‘Habanera’, The Tiger Club’s Mephisto Island is a loungey, sprawling set of instrumental tunes that give the impression that the tongue is firmly in its cheek….without a doubt the ideal soundtrack to your next cocktail party.

Excellence is the only way I can describe The Tiger Club’s music on the band’s latest release, “Mephisto Island”. This is jazz music at its best and I doubt that I’ll hear any instrumental music this good the rest of 2014…Overall, Mephisto Island is an 11 track musical masterpiece that, in my book, puts The Tiger Club in the same category as some of my all-time favorites to listen to, like the great Burt Bacharach.

Supposing the Adams Family weren’t morose, but rather a happy-go lucky, trippy crew, they would probably really love The Tiger Club. And, supposing Don Draper (TV’s Madmen), didn’t have a chip on his shoulder and actually cracked a smile, he too, would like to tango with The Tiger Club.
Combining 60s shtick and colorful orchestrations taut with horns, soft jazz, galloping choruses and classical notes, The Tiger Club leads to a delightful journey in their Mephisto Island.

…a sound that ties together Gilberto and Getz…with a hint of Squirrel Nut Zippers…an innovative and unique style that will have listeners on the edges of their seats. The richness and complexity of each of The Tiger Club’s compositions on Mephisto Island make this into a must listen.

The Tiger Club have this record out, Mephisto Island, and you know it has to be available on vinyl somewhere, otherwise, it’d be simply criminal. Something so perfectly throw back and lovingly performed should be a staple for any hip young professional or couple’s brand new hi-fi.

The Tiger Club is fierce. A mixture of instrumental pop, lounge and Latin jazz. Magnificent instrumentation, composition and production. “Habanera” is an infectious compilation which will bring you to your feet. Feel good music for the soul. Every section of song pierces your heart with passion. Most music supervisors will be aroused by such genuine beauty. This ensemble’s sophistication and marketability has earned them a spot on our #360WatchList.

- Vaughn Lowery, 360 Magazine

The Tiger Club’s “Mephisto Island” is incredibly cool – Bossa Nova, 60s revival cool. Listening to it is an absolute joy. With a joyful take on lounge, the songs have perfect arrangements, the kinds of things that Joao Gilberto would have been proud to call his own.

Film Scoring Redux – Observations on Film Music in the 21st CenturyBrad Hughes (Director, School of Music Production & Sound Design for Visual Media - Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA) // November 12, 2014

In February of 2011, at the Academy Awards ceremony honoring the best achievements in the art of motion pictures, the Oscar for Best Original Score was awarded to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, for their haunting, moody music score in director David Fincher’s film, ‘The Social Network’. Here is a list of the other film scores nominated that year, along with their composers and total box office revenues:

This team has gone on to create music scores for the same director (David Fincher) for his other films, including ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’, and most recently, ‘Gone Girl’.

Reznor and Ross’s Oscar win signaled an aesthetic shift in what constitutes an effective music score in film, and also provides an interesting snapshot along the timeline of evolution in the art of film music. In my Film Music History course in the School of Music Production and Sound Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, we survey the entire history of music for film, and this moment was clearly a big shift from the scores that preceded it. We’ve come a long, long way since Austrian born composer Max Steiner crafted his monumental orchestral score for 1933’s ‘King Kong’- which successfully helped make Kong’s character more believable, utilizing low orchestration for strings, brass, and percussion to reflect his great size, weight and power. Steiner’s score is now considered a masterpiece, and was a major factor in creating the illusion for audiences of Kong as a massive, powerful monster, yet also a sympathetic character with a soul. The arc of Kong’s character takes on new depth via the score. The film was an undisputed success, commercially and artistically – largely due to Steiner’s score – and became the model on which future orchestral films scores would be built.

For most of the 20th century, film score has been largely characterized by European symphonic music, largely due to the fact that the early pioneers of this art form were European immigrant composers, trained in conservatories, whose compositional voice was the symphony orchestra. These early composers, like Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, and Miklos Rosza, brought a musical reflection of the emotion and characters in these stories, and gave them a big voice: there is no sound quite like the dramatic swell of an 80 piece orchestra in the climactic moment of a music cue. This musical tradition, of course, has its stylistic roots in opera, as well as in the Romantic period of western European concert music (roughly from about 1825 – 1915), when orchestral composers like Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, Gustav Holst, and Maurice Ravel brought a new level of personal expression to their writing, giving full voice to the expressive power of the human spirit. In the evolution of symphonic concert music, the Romantic Era signaled a shift away from musical works that reflected universal themes – and were governed by a strict adherence to established forms – into a more personal, expressive music that reflected the individual feelings and emotions of the composer – rich soil indeed in which to grow the newly emerging art form of scoring a film – where reflecting emotion is a key component.

Other music styles began to emerge in film score later in the 20th century, like jazz, R&B, and eventually, electronic music, born out of the invention of analog synthesizers. The first analog synths were invented as far back as the 1920s and 1930s, using vacuum tube and electro-mechanical technologies. Bebe and Louis Barron famously used early synths to create the first all electronic film score in 1956 for The Forbidden Planet. But it was not until after the 1960s, when synths shifted to op-amp integrated circuits in a modular design, that synths became widespread and began to be used in all kinds of music production, as well as in some late 20th century film scores.

1979’s Apocalypse Now famously utilized five composers, all using Moog synthesizers, famously invented by the pioneering inventor Robert Moog. This was also the first film to be commercially released in the Dolby 5.1 surround sound format – and sound and music for movies never looked back.

The methodology and workflow of how films are scored is also changing. Music is generally the last element added to a film’s soundtrack. Traditionally, we watch a completed film in a spotting session, and establish where music will go and what kind of music we should have, etc., and then a composer will go off and, using these timing notes, write specific music cues for specific scenes in the film – all in a very linear format. What Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have done in the Fincher films is to write music away from the picture, and then these cues are edited into the film just before final mix. They are still writing with a direction, based on emotional cues given by the director, and they have watched the film to get a sense of context, but the traditional linear model is abandoned in favor of a more modular approach, where certain cues which may have been written for one scene may end up being used in another – provided of course, that the emotional resonance created by the synthesis of sound and image is working.

In 2013 the Oscar for Best Score went to Steven Price, for ‘Gravity’. The irony here is that Price was initially hired as an music editor for the project, but ended up crafting a score that reflects the recent blurring of the lines between ‘score’ and ‘sound design’. As Price himself stated in an interview from 2013: “I was asked to try and tonally represent things that would ordinarily be sound. You don’t hear an explosion in the film, but you might hear some pulsation in the music that reflects it.” (Huffington Post, 10/04/2013, Rosen)

The fact that the industry is awarding Best Score Oscars to music scores like ‘Gravity’, and ‘The Social Network’ in recent years seems to indicate that audiences tastes are shifting. It is certainly true that audiences are far more sophisticated now than ever before (my students always snicker when they see the early stop motion animated King Kong from 1933 pop up on the screen), but the most interesting question for me is, how does music work in conjunction with visual media to produce an emotional response in the viewer? There are a lot of factors in play here, of course, and they all influence whether a film is a success or not: screenplay, acting, costume design, set design, cinematography, direction, sound, music – all of these elements, if it’s working, combine into a cohesive experience for the viewer, where they are swept into a created world for an unforgettable experience. Music, however, is often the key element that elicits the emotional response from the viewer. What is the sound of joy? Of desperation or despair? Is it cellos? A swirling ambient synth pad? There is more than one right answer to those questions, and as the art form of film music continues its evolution, future composers will continue searching for that aesthetic resonance that all great art inspires.

Even When It Seems UnlikelyBaxter Robertson // September 24, 2014

I was listening to some “sports talk” this morning. The hosts were asking each otherif, as cynical veterans, there was still anybody they would be nervous or giddy about talking with or interviewing in that field of celebrity. It then occurred to me how times I’ve been able to thank or express my appreciation to people of whom I was a fan(and yes, I was nervous!):

Pat Paulsen(comedian/writer the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour): Had a drink with me in the darkened bar at the Ice House, Pasadena (1974).

Gary Wright(Dreamweaver): The late comic and friend Larry Beezer DRAGGED me back stage at the Roxy, LA, to meet Gary. Larry had just done an opening set. I was embarrassed but managed to get the compliment out. “Dream Weaver” was currently a huge hit. (1975)

Paul Atkinson, guitarist for the brit-invasion group, the Zombies. Told him I was as much influenced by his band as the Beatles, which was true. As head of A & R at RCA, West Coast, he had seen my band and heard my demo. Now he was signing me to my first major record deal. (1983)

Christine McVie(Fleetwood Mac): expressed my fandom for her while opening for her on a 22-city national tour. She helped me fine-tune my eye-liner application backstage in Portland, ME. (1984)

Steve Winwood: Expressed how much his playing and singing had influenced me as we had pints in a pub in Dublin, Ireland, with our mutual engineer/producer Tom Lord-Alge. (1987)

Bob Siebenberg, drummer for Supertramp: was brought in by him and mutual friend, Dennis O’Donnell as a singer on a few tracks of his solo album. Later did a gig with him and his son in Deadwood, S.Dakota. (1995)

Jerry Miller, guitarist for the seminal SF band, Moby Grape: told him my sister had turned me on to their great music. My band, the Cheeseballs, had performed just before his at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. (1998)

Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent of the Zombies: stayed after their show at Café du Nord, SF, to have them sign their first album for me; told both of them what I had told their former bandmate, Atkinson, by this time deceased. Told Blunstone I had literally learned to sing from listening to their records. (2003)

These were people of whom I was a REAL fan, whose work had somehow sunk in with me. There was little else to say but “thanks”, but in some cases I was able to hold my own as a peer…if only for appearances!

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My dulled machete hacked its way through the seemingly endless undergrowth.

Soaking with the perspiration of jungle fever, I lunged into a clearing. What I next saw amazed me. In the embers of daylight stood a large edifice constructed from the very jungle itself; upraised on stout poles, awaiting the inevitable tropic rains. Neon!? How could there be neon 100 kilometers from the nearest outpost? To my further astonishment, I saw a Bentley and Mercedes parked alongside native jalopies; even a type of rickshaw! The neon read: “The Tiger Club”. Gathering myself somewhat, I hoisted myself up the causeway, encountering a large imposing gentleman in a turban, an ornate scimitar thrust in his purple sash. Perhaps taking pity, he silently escorted me through the pounded brass doors and over to a captain’s station. Disheveled and disoriented as I was, I there presented my letters of credit to the captain, who then ushered me into a large and unexpectedly opulent room. Was that Lord Percy Bridwell of the foreign service, cozying up to the film actress, Carla DuVet? Also dotted about tables and booths: international jet-setters, a Nobel laureate anthropologist, star athletes, various unmistakable underworld unsavories. How would they know to come here? Or rather, how did they GET here? I felt a tug at my sleeve. A boy was beckoning me into a wing of the building with a bundle under his arm. I arrived at a dressing room and immediately indulged in a much needed bath and shave. Hanging nearby was a linen suit near enough my size and gauze shoes that fit amazing well. Now presentable, I re-entered the club, the captain coaxing me to a table overlooking the dance floor. A tall beverage of deep aqua-blue appeared in front of me, served with a wink by a coquette in an alluring native sarong. Suddenly a gong rang out. The velvet curtains parted, and the show began.

Musicians

Andersen moved to the United States as a 21 year old in 2001, and became a figure on the West Coast blues scene. He played in Charlie Musselwhites band and got a Blues Music Award (formerly W.C. Handy Award) for best contemporary blues album for Charlie Musselwhite'sDelta Hardware. When Little Charlie Baty retired from touring, Andersen took his place as guitarist in the Nightcats, and the new name of Rick Estrin & the Nightcats was formed. Andersen also has done extensive touring with Elvin Bishop on the Red Dog Speaks Tour. In 2013, Andersen was nominated for a Blues Music Award in the 'Gibson Guitar' category. In 2014, he was nominated for a Blues Music Award in the 'Best Instrumentalist – Guitar' category.

Cal began his professional career as a bass player and singer and only recently switched to playing guitar. Cal plays nylon, electric and acoustic guitars and also served as the producer and mixer on “Mephisto Island”. Prior to joining The Tiger Club, Cal collaborated with Marty Atkinson to form Cactus Choir, recording albums for Atlantic and Curb Records. Cal has also served as a backup musician to such artists as Buddy Miles, Sylvester, and Marty Balin. Cal met Baxter at a studio session where they were both hired as background singers and have been working together on various projects ever since...

Originally, from Kansas City, Eric is a multi-instrumentalist playing both piano and flute. Eric is featured playing the alto flute on “Behind the 7th Veil” from The Tiger Club album “Mephisto Island”. Eric lived and worked in Los Angeles for 30 years, scoring music for a number of hit television shows including Ally McBeal, Boston Public and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He has served as a backing musician for a host of great artists including Stevie Wonder, Cher, Bette Midler and Dolly Parton. Eric has a robust solo career having released three albums “Tranquility” (Moodtapes), “Energy” and his latest release “Follow Your Heart” where you’ll hear his most personal writing and playing yet. Along with recording and performance career, Eric also serves as an online professor at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco teaching music theory, arranging and ear training. To learn more about Eric and his music, check his website at www.ericbikales.com.

Brad Hughes has over 23 years of experience in sound and music as a composer, saxophonist, recording engineer and editor for clients including Dreamworks, Soundelux, The Hollywood Edge, and Creativity Studios. He has recorded on the scoring stages of 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Studios, and serves on the Board of Governors as a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. In 2009, he founded the School of Music Production & Sound Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he presently serves as Department Director. He has a BFA from U.C.L.A., and an MFA from The California Institute of the Arts.

The Tiger Club is the creation of composer Baxter Robertson. Baxter trained at UCLA, graduating with a degree in composition. Early in his career, Baxter recorded several records for major labels including RCA, Atlantic and ATCO. Baxter has spent his entire career as a composer and performer, placing his compositions in television and major motion pictures. Today, Baxter continues to compose music for commercial applications and teaches graduate level studies in harmony and music theory at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Click BIO on the banner menu to read more about Baxter and how he started The Tiger Club.

Nicolo Scolieri plays flute and percussion in the Latin Jazz Big Band at UCLA, as well as upright bass with the award-winning BlueGrass Hoppers. He is currently studying Ethnomusicology and Recording Engineering, following a four year program in flute performance at the San Francisco School of the Arts. He developed his ensemble and improvisational skills with various community music groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He toured China with the Peninsula Youth Orchestra (flute), performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival and the New Orleans NEA Jazz Educators Conference with the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars (baritone sax), and performed at the Healdsburg and San Jose Jazz Festivals with the Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble (flute, percussion and tenor sax). He enjoys exploring various musical cultures and is currently involved in groups playing Reggae, Arab music, Southern Italian folk music, and more. He looks forward to his future in both academia and on stage.

Bethanne Walker is currently pursuing a Master of Music degree in flute performance with emphasis in historical performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she holds the Lorna Meyer and Dennis Calas Family Scholarship. She currently studies flute with Timothy Day and baroque flute with Stephen Schultz. In 2012, she was the William H. Grass Memorial Prize Winner of the 32nd Pappoutsakis Memorial Flute Competition in Boston, MA. Bethanne has participated in several masterclasses, music festivals, and competitions. A native of Eugene, Oregon, she began her flute studies at the age of twelve, and studied with Dr. Nancy Andrew, who was a student of the late Marcel Moyse; she also has previously studied with Linda Toote at the Boston Conservatory.

Ross Barber is a web designer who specializes in design for bands and musicians. With his company Electric Kiwi, he has worked with many independent and unsigned artists to enhance their online presence.

Gary Durrett – Video concept and editing

Production

Cal began his professional career as a bass player and singer and only recently switched to playing guitar. Cal plays nylon, electric and acoustic guitars and also served as the producer and mixer on “Mephisto Island”. Prior to joining The Tiger Club, Cal collaborated with Marty Atkinson to form Cactus Choir, recording albums for Atlantic and Curb Records. Cal has also served as a backup musician to such artists as Buddy Miles, Sylvester, and Marty Balin. Cal met Baxter at a studio session where they were both hired as background singers and have been working together on various projects ever since...

Mephisto Island

I had to do an arrangement of this well-known Bizet melody for a toy product I was working on (in my other life as a composer of music for toys). Previously, I had re-purposed the nursery rhyme “Hey-Diddle-Diddle” for the band on our first album, also from a toy arrangement. The “Carmen” piece seemed like a similar good fit for the Tiger Club. The arrangement is primarily for a skeleton core group of Tigers, along the lines of the instrumentation for most of our early shows(seven or eight players). As an opening tune, it affords a recognizable melody for the listener, who will subsequently be asked to latch onto and approve of my original tunes that follow…

This song is the theme for an imagined TV western, “The Arizonan”. I took it pretty much down the 60’s road of marrying electric guitar with a more orchestrated backing arrangement. Cal Ball (nylon guitar) added the “Apache” flavor using the acoustic nylon for the bookends of the tune.

There are two elegies contained in this record. The first to address is for my good friend and mentor, Geoff Cooper. “Green Goddess” is the first song of an elegiac trilogy, “Return of Dr. Mabuse”. That handle was Geoff’s pseudonym. In writing this group of three songs, including “Order of the Seeing Eye”, and the “Lair of Dr. Mabuse”(later included), the overall theme and package for “Mephisto Island” made themselves manifest. Adventure, Danger, Intrigue, Lust, the Black Arts: all part of Geoff Cooper’s persona, now become part of the Tiger Club lexicon. “Green Goddess” portrays the deceptively cloying lure to the earthly pleasures which the evil Dr. Mabuse offers in return for complete obeisance to his sinister schemes.

“Apeliotes” is a minor wind-god of the Greeks, southeast to be specific. Minor because he-she is not one of the major compass points. The Tiger Club always likes to give props to even the most obscure and least significant deities(of all pantheons). I meant for this piece to be an organ feature with a simple groove and some exotic percussion. Somehow it got way out of hand, to the point where it absolutely HAD to have a full complement of strings along with other contents of the proverbial kitchen sink. We’re all glad for that.

A simple swingin’ sixties style “half-latin-half-Hollywood” party song. No animal testing was used in this recording. The band is wearing scarves and “acceptable” Beatle boots while performing this. The in-studio go-go cage girls are in white patent leather knee-boots, mini-skirts, and Carnaby Street caps. Highballs served in the Tonga Room adjacent. BYOG.

I wrote this as a “processional” for the band. The form and melody are extremely simple by design; as an opener, it would serve to allow the band to warm-up and ramp-up. Although we didn’t open the album with it, it gives the listener a realistic flavor of a live Tiger Club show, sort of a “Tiger Club Primer”.

This was one of the first pieces I wrote for the second album after we had finished the first. I knew the next record would have some sort of adventure theme so I wanted to have a sultry, exotic, hookah-smoke-filled entry. This was more or less a simple piano tune that we filled in with other Tiger Club elements. Bass clarinet was a happy accidental afterthought. This is the world in which most of the Mephisto Island songs live, regardless of appearances.

This is the second song of the Dr. Mabuse trilogy. While on the surface it seems rather light-hearted, it’s actually a sort of “Witch’s Sabbath” where all the members of the Doctor’s secret evil order are reveling at their temple, preparing for more reckless (yet profitable) mischief.

This is the second elegy of the two I mentioned. Taken from life at the early age of 26, Raquel Thomson was our next-door neighbor, friend, and surrogate daughter. Her nickname amongst her family was “Cheena”. As they are an extended Latino family who has included us in countless family gatherings and celebrations (along with KILLER homemade Mexican food), I came up with the title before I started writing the song. I soon realized I was absolutely inept at performing a mambo piano pattern, so I took about a year to teach myself the piano part of this song before we recorded it. I was trying to achieve a light, breezy atmosphere, which is what Raquel brought to every room she entered.

The Tiger Club had an upcoming date where I knew there would be a significant Latino presence and I didn’t feel I had enough material that would cross over to that taste. I’d been listening to more reggaeton at that time, so I wrote a “lounge-reggaeton” Tiger Club style to premiere at the show. The horn head was pretty traditional, so I interjected a space-pop bridge to give the arrangement more TC distinction. Brad Hughes plays a sax solo that could ONLY be performed BY HIM and on the fly.

The third entry and finale of the trilogy. Fittingly, it is one of the late Dr.’s best friends, Craig Kupka, performing the signature trombone theme. The most overblown of any arrangement we’ve ever tried. I like to think Geoff (Dr. Mabuse) would approve of the unwieldy bloat of this piece with his name on it. It portrays the hidden lagoon and hideout of the evil Doctor, from whence all his plans are hatched, all his black arts are practiced, all his enemies are imprisoned, all his henchmen are housed.